Web Accessibility Delivers New Insights

Winds, rain showers and snow. In the last months the weather went crazy in Germany. As strong as this limited the lives of people, virtual barriers sometimes limit handicapped people: Before you can enter your e-mail account plenty of buttons need to be clicked. Suddenly little windows with coloured advertisements appear on the screen and block the view on the latest news.

01/12/2005

Normally it only takes a few clicks to buy a digital camera but people with disabilities must overcome a lot of navigation barriers. But this should stop at the end of 2005. As stipulated in § 11 of the equalisation law the web should be accessible for all. But these guidelines are limited to institutions of state administration. For all other web content developers use these guidelines voluntarily. The 15 guidelines include a lot of checkpoints which can be downloaded at www.w3.org.

The guidelines for example take care of people who are colour blind. Web users with red-and green defects cannot see red letters on a green background. Therefore, the information should also be made visible without colours - only white and black layouts.

According to the Federal office of security in information technique there are eight percent of web users who need an accessible web. Besides, web accessibility helps to save money. Download time will be reduced up to one third. And the accessible sites without frames will be frequently shown on search engines. Web accessibility brings content developers social and economical importance and more clients. So web accessibility has not only something to do with a "good tune”.

REHACARE.de